Category: Sign of the Apocalypse

A friend and I went to BestBuy yesterday to get a cheap digital camera for a project. We knew we were stepping into it, but had no choice. It was as…ah… impressive as we’d feared. Insanity to the n-th degree. The place was choked with rabid shoppers reaching over each other for expensive blinking baubles from Far East silicon sweatshops. When we finally asked a salesperson whether the camera we were interested in was available, he looked taken by surprise. He went away for a while, came back, and said: “It probably is…” PROBABLY is? “We want to buy it,” we replied, “so we need to know.” “Oh, well I represent Canon, you’ll have to ask somebody else.” He was in an official BestBuy get-up but he’s a shill for Canon? Imagine a future in which all of the salespeople in a store can only talk to you about/sell you products that they represent.

This is just one Kodak Moment (from hell) of the afternoon. The parking lot was particularly entertaining. Each time we saw a near-accident or bone-headed manuever, we’d break into: “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” Indeed.

For more electronics store funtimes, check out this entry on Boekhoff.org about a nightmarish Circuit City encounter.

Had your fill of celebrity ringtones, “moantones” (ringtones from pornstars), and music clips from already overplayed pop songs? This same sorta noise pollution is coming soon to a car navigation system near you. NavTones, a California company, has hired the likes of Mr. T, Burt Reynolds, and Dennis Hopper to record navigation commands (wow, talk about your celebrity A-list). And you thought the voice of that disembodied Stepford Wife that can currently be heard in a lot of car nav systems was creepy and quickly annoying.

A little more to our liking is TomTom, another personal nav company, that has hired John Cleese to do various characters, including a New York cabbie and a Freudian analyst. That’d definitely be entertaining… for what? A day? One trip across town?

“I pitty the fool who pays actual money for infotainment this lame.”

[Via CNNMoney]

Thanks, Jay!

Just in time for the holidays comes this lovely new fashion accessory for every apocalyptic paranoid on your gift list. It’s a Micro Bomb Detector, a serious little key fob thingy that’ll alert you to the presence of an RDD (Radiological Dispersal Device), a.k.a. a “dirty bomb.” Pair one of these little stocking stuffers with an avian flu nano-mask and you’ll clearly be telling your loved ones: “There are plenty of gadgets like these to keep us safe during the coming dark ages.”

Now you can watch the traffic up ahead without having to actually watch the traffic up ahead. Traffic Vizzion is a service that uses the GPS/Bluetooth capabilities of your mobile phone to find and feed you video from local highway traffic cams. The service cost $5/month and is currently available in 20 major metros. “Hey, look, that’s a Matrix exactly like mine about to be hit head-on by an out-of-control ZipCar.”

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was taken aback yesterday when he tried to vote using an electronic voting machine and was told by the machine that he’d already done so. Apparently, last month, a voting official, testing the network, had entered in the Governator’s name. Of course, being the Governor, he was able to vote “again.” You or I? Not likely.

[Via TechDirt]

It’s amazing to me that people continuously get taken in by these ridiculous visions of universal robots that’ll be cleaning our houses and babysitting our children any day now. Valerie the Department Store Mannequin … we mean… the “Domestic Android” has been getting media attention for years now. So what is she, exactly? She’s a spec sheet wish list, an “order form” (buy yours today for $59,000), and a few roughed-out subsystems, all light years away from a bot that can “clean your house, change light bulbs, wash the dishes, do the laundry, check the sports scores for you, book plane tickets and call the police if there’s an emergency.” And what’s with the mixed message of having a sexy robot that won’t have sex with you? And that outfit! She gonna clean my oven in that thing? The style says “successful female executive,” but the cut says “do me on the lunchroom counter.”

Maybe we should “build” a similar robot domestic here at Street Tech Labs.

Okay. Done. Introducing Sinthia, Street Tech’s very own android domestic. She’s a dead ringer for Angelina Jolie, does all the things that Valerie does, PLUS she’ll do your taxes, refinish your furniture, and give you all the “happy endings” you desire. We’ve also programmed in a much better fashion sense. All this (and more) for only $30K! Make checks payable to me and send them to Street Tech’s Cayman Islands HQ. Noncritical media inquiries welcome.

What is it with the Japanese and high-tech toilets? The latest offering to try and one up existing johns that raise automatically, heat your seat, ablute your nethers, and let you watch TV or surf the Net, is the Toto Toilet MP3. So, you’re sitting there with your second helping of morning coffee (in a mug that’s bigger than your head), reading your email, listening to some delightful digital tuneage, when all of a sudden, you have an overwhelming urge to… listen to music in the bathroom. Just load your tunes of choice onto a Secure Digital (SD) card and away you go (at least, after you’ve loaded the SD card into the toilet’s music machine).

[Via Akihabara News]

From the makers of Ebola Happy Fun Ball, SARS Chew, and Influenza Sticks comes NanoMask, the nanoparticle-coated filter mask designed to “arrest and eradicate…undesirable agents.” Send before midnight tonight, and they’ll also toss in a free ebook (“H5N1 Virus: How to Protect Your Family Against the Coming Pandemic”), AND if you buy the family pack of 5-color-coded masks, they’ll throw in a free bottle of snake oi…er… ImmunAssure, the “amazing virus-fighting tablet.” Wait, I thought the mask had already killed the virus dead on contact. Oh well, best not to think too hard here.

[Thanks, Alberto!]

[BTW: We made up those other products (Ebola Happy Fun Ball, et al.) We kid the NanoMask people. We kid because we love.]

Clueless court and patent office goons strike again. According to a piece on TechDirt:

Last month a judge upheld a patent ruling against BCGI for helping mobile operators offer prepaid wireless solutions. Yes, that’s right. Having someone pay you before you give them mobile phone service is patented. Now, the judge has increased the fine and issued an injunction that means many carriers offering BCGI’s prepaid wireless offerings will have to stop.

This is allegedly not a joke (tho we have our suspicions): According to a short piece on the U.K.’s The Register, BT Laboratories is researching the idea of implanting MP3 players into…well implants, ya know, as in fake boobies. The piece asks:

God alone knows how you select tracks, but breasts do come equipped with a pleasing alternative to the iPod’s selector wheel. We can imagine the scenario: Girlfriend: “Oi, what the bloody hell are you doing?” Boyfriend: “Hold on, I’m just scrolling down to Stairway to Heaven.”

Doesn’t British Telecom have anything better to do with their research time and money? A decade or so ago, they got a lot of press for talking about research into downloading brains onto silicon and for chips that could record and backup all of your experiences for later retrieval. Maybe they should get back to that. Let me guess, they found out that these concepts, while great for press attention, are really, really hard (even impossible), but silicon in silicone? Not so much (and no less press-grubby).

[Thanks, Jay!]